Open AccessAssessment of heat pumping technology in oleochemical fatty acid fractionation
Author(s) -
Norul M. Sidek,
Mohamad Rizza Othman
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/702/1/012012
Subject(s) - process engineering , distillation , heat pump , fractionation , vacuum distillation , fractionating column , environmental science , computer science , chemistry , materials science , pulp and paper industry , chromatography , mechanical engineering , heat exchanger , engineering
Similar to petroleum industry, major energy consumption in oleochemical plants is also dominated by separation process in order to obtain purified oleochemical cuts. Combination of the distillation column with heat pumping system has emerged as one of the most popular techniques in heat integration. Although heat pumping technology has been proven to be effective in petroleum separation, the research on this technology in oleochemical separation has not yet been discovered. Hence, it would be appealing to investigate the feasibility of integrating heat pump technology with distillation units in hopes of reducing energy usage in the separation of oleochemical products. In this study, two configurations of heat pumping system, namely direct vapor recompression (VRC) and bottom flashing heat pump (BFHP) are simulated in Aspen Plus particularly for fractionation of palm kernel oil (PKO) fatty acid. Proper selection of thermodynamic package is discussed in detail. Only three major components of PKO-based fatty acid are involved in the simulation in order to arrive at simple simulation and easy convergence. Simulation results indicates that both configurations of heat pump can be feasibly integrated with the distillation column. However, to satisfy the heating and cooling requirement, supply of makeup utility is necessary.